The present invention relates to a vehicle-mounted apparatus, an information providing method for use with the vehicle-mounted apparatus, and an information providing method program for use with the vehicle-mounted apparatus. More particularly, the invention relates to a vehicle-mounted apparatus which has navigation and content reproduction capabilities and which is structured to have its displays switched in menu-based fashion upon input of fingertip gestures made by a user on a touch-sensitive panel, whereby the user's ease of operation is enhanced.
In the past, some vehicle-mounted car navigation apparatuses were designed to display hierarchically structured menus that were selected by manual input through a touch-sensitive panel or the like, as disclosed illustratively in Japanese Patent Laid-open No. Hei 10-141974. Vehicle-mounted car navigation apparatuses of another type such as one disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-open No. Hei 11-85398 were designed to admit the input of line drawings through a touch-sensitive panel.
Recent years have seen vehicle-mounted apparatuses of yet another type proposed which have their navigation capabilities supplemented with audio and video reproduction functions. These vehicle-mounted apparatus are characterized by an excellent space-saving feature. they take up far less space than a car navigation device, a car audio device and other equipment mounted individually on the vehicle.
However, the above type of vehicle-mounted apparatus typically presents the user with a baffling array of elaborate information displays and complicated operations to perform. These navigation-related operations and information displays are compounded with those for audio and video content reproduction. The resulting complex user interface can multiply the operational burdens on the user. Specifically, because of their beefed-up functionality, hierarchically structured menu displays entail a growing number of menu-related hierarchical operations that need to be carried out manually, leading to an appreciable drop in the user's ease of operation. The simple function of displaying such menus involves complications in the manner in which the display screens are structured, also contributing to the worsening ease of use. In particular, the manner of inputting commands using line drawings as proposed by Japanese Patent Laid-open No. Hei 11-85398 can result in an abruptly spiked operational burden on the user because the functional improvements involved require more and more line drawings to be entered.